


Crown of Thorns

by DrunkYeet



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: About a decade after canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Canon, Yut-Lung cuts his hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 03:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16966653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrunkYeet/pseuds/DrunkYeet
Summary: Lee Yut-Lung had been a slave of many; memories forged in blood, touches of strangers, black against red.The moon watched as he cut a cord in the darkness of his chambers.





	Crown of Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I won't be writing another fic ever but inspiration strikes when you're cutting your hair out of stress and wonder, "What if Yeet?"

He had always a delicate movement about him; his body carried him like feather upon clouds, his motions like water and air and their marriage with a faint sense of the clandestine veneration of the corporeal.

He had always prided himself in the dancing of his hands. Like wisps of smoke nestling in the air before completely dissipating, the trail of his movements lingered starkly in the eyes and faded slowly towards the mind. He was a dancer in his own right. It showed in a flick of the wrist that even in midair talked of grace and elegance. 

He worked his fingers so precisely they parted in motions as if they careened and trotted to the very spaces that summoned the perfect balance of beauty and perfection. They make the softest contact, the most exquisite touch, the most precise outcome. 

Yet he found them wanting of the same at the moment. 

The scissors clanged against the marble sink to lie on top of long locks of silky hair. One silver blade glinted like a star against the night sky. The edges of the sink served as the terrain to which his trembling hands anchored themselves. The marble was cold and hard. It was roughly and inelegantly marred in swirls of the same black tendrils of his now dead crown, dull and crude as he stared and stared, breath hitching and leaving him in gusts of icy blows.

He lifted his face to stare at his reflection on the surface of the mirror and saw someone else staring back. They had the same face, but there was a blunt countenance to the one who met his eyes.

Somber, almost dead eyes.

There was a resounding knell of defeat within his chest as he brought his head down and sighed. His hair was a tattered mess that fell in an ugly, uneven length just below his jaw. Despite the current length, the weight of his head and the strands that hugged his face felt heavier than when they reached his hips. 

At the same time, strangely, he felt lighter. 

Unable to take a step back, he picked up the scissors again, lightly brushing off minute strands that clung to the handle and the pivot of the blades. The trembling of his hands betrayed his command of his motions, just as the dull aching of his heart was a traitor to his conviction in the endeavor. 

He pulled down the strands that covered one side of his face and positioned them in between the blades. He cut and they fell away like brittle threads. An image of a woman flashed briefly beneath his eyes and his heart constricted from the pangs of longing he had failed to eliminate. Purposely, perhaps, for doing so was killing her, eradicating her presence and memory. 

At one point, however, the same frame of mind disentangled itself from his current inclinations, forcing a decision that found him hacking away at the very thing that had long since grounded him to her and to the world.

The cut he made on the strands that curled in towards the side of his face was quick and liberating, but the action pierced his chest and took the breath from his lungs like a thief in the night. His hands, still trembling and weak from the ironic gravity of the activity, fell to the edges of the sink and their rattling served to shake his very core.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the man staring back at him from the mirror. He was pale and pallid, wide-eyed and undeniable scared. His cognizance of the turmoil that made home in his mind was too overpowering. 

He cut more inches from the hair towards the side of his face. And then the back. At times he cut blindly; down the his neck where the strands seem to cling like they have consciousness themselves, afraid of parting from his cold, damp skin, and then lastly, the locks that framed his eyes. 

By the end, his hair hung in unseemly layers, the sad product of an obvious amateurish effort. His hands made the motion to gather his hair but there was not enough left to fully grasp. He only managed to brush them back. 

This was it: she was gone and so was his veil. In the silence of the bathroom, only his silent sobbing pierced the air. 

\--

“What...” was Sing Soo-Ling’s first words as he entered the ornately, yet quite unnecessarily, decorated chambers of Yut-Lung. The latter was sitting atop his four-poster bed, slumped over a laptop.

He looked up from where his eyes were fixed on the monitor and raised an arched brow at Sing, a playful inquisitiveness breaking his otherwise blank stare. 

“The. Fuck.” Sing managed, more to himself than out loud. 

Still, the words failed to escape Yut-Lung’s ears. Frankly, Yut-Lung expected it. More than shock and bewilderment, however, he feared Sing’s disapproval; his dismay. For whatever reason, it bothered him to think about disappointing Sing, and with the passing of a second, a flicker of anger and a surge of rage rose from within him, breaking his facade and stinging his eyes. 

“I don’t need your stupid comments, Sing.” he snapped. “I got a fucking haircut, it’s not a goddamn crime.” 

Sing grinned. “Calm down, hey.”

“Wipe that smile off your face.”

“Okay,” Sing answered, his smile growing.

Yut-Lung groaned and went back to fiddling with files on his laptop. He was aware that Sing was staring at him, possibly examining the way he looked with nothing hanging over one shoulder, deciding whether or not it was a welcome change. He let him. 

For a while they stayed in silence. Minutes after, Sing produced a book from somewhere--Yut-Lung was trying to be busy with business--and sneaked a peek. He saw that it was a hardcover edition of Islands in The Stream by Hemingway. Strange, he thought, classics did not interest Sing. 

Yut-Lung chalked it up to Sing’s choice of post-graduate electives that he in the US. He never did like nor enjoyed the semesters he spent in Hong Kong at Yut-Lung’s behest. Perhaps that contributed to his preference of Western literature. Perhaps it could be something else entirely, Yut-Lung couldn’t be bothered. 

A while later Sing strode lazily towards him. 

“So. Side-parted bangs, huh?” he asked, plopping down on one of the velvet ottoman near Yut-Lung’s bed. His feet found rest on top of the mattress just in front, its similar velvet cover scraping against the roughness of his red canvas shoes. 

This was the third time Yut-Lung saw the pair on Sing. In the back of his mind, however, he was certain that it was more than the times he saw a similar pair worn by a long-gone foe, who, in the sick, twisted way the world allowed for children like them to exist, lived too long and too loud before finally succumbing to his fate.

Sing picked up the proclivity in his stead, he thought in hindsight. After all, and somehow sadly, the boy worshipped not only Ash Lynx but also all that he represents. 

Casting the fairly intrusive thought aside, Yut-Lung turned his head to the right, letting his short tresses dangle with the motion. “How is it?” 

Sing snorted a bit too loud, “Different, that’s for sure.” 

Slender yet calloused fingers combed through what’s left of Yut-Lung’s hair, stopping just before it reached the ends that hung sharply at his neck, just high enough to cover his tattoo. 

“I know. But how is it?” 

Sing’s hand was hot against the delicate skin on his neck and he felt an uncanny comfort at the absence of a barrier between it and Sing’s skin.

“What, you don’t like it?”

Sing shrugged, then gestured at him, the entirety of him, with an upward wave of his wide hand, “Nah. I mean, you look so, so, so, very different but you know. You’re still you. What’s not to like?” 

Immediately, Yut-Lung’s chest gave way to a sudden pooling of warmth, arresting his wandering thoughts in the moment. 

It was not an abstruse concept to understand and see that Sing Soo-Ling had candidness to rival a toddler’s, but the same always kept Yut-Lung on his toes. There was a sense of hazard to it that he found fascinatingly intimidating rather than the endearing novelty that most people would claim it was.

Sing owned himself. He had an agency that, in the past decade, slowly but firmly evolved from the impulsive yet unawaringly affectionate Chinese boy of fourteen, to a man who’s confident, cocksure even, in the skin of an adult. He showed it in the way he moved, the way he regarded people, business partners and friends alike, the way he talked to them, and the way he treated them. 

More prominently, in the way he looked at him. 

Yut-Lung pursed his lips.

“You’re still uncomfortable.” he declared, catching his eyes and somehow holding them there.

“Well, yes, it’s something to slowly get used to, I suppose.” Yut-Lung voiced out.

“It’s not that. It’s just that you were fingering it the whole time so I assumed you’re thinking it over as usual. You’re attached to your hair like that.” Sing fired quickly. 

Sing was correct, unsurprisingly. Often, it amazes Yut-Lung just how the slightest gestures and littlest habits of his fail to evade Sing’s notice. Perhaps it’s a natural predisposition to patterns that led to a sharp observational capability, or maybe just a keen sense of detail. At the back of Yut-Lung’s mind, however, screamed a thought that would have made more sense despite the apparent logic and rationale of the aforementioned: Sing knows him more than he could care to admit.

“And you’d notice that, of course.” Yut-Lung spoke softly, almost under his breath. His hand traced the curve of his hair with light, feathery touches.

“Of course.” he leaned in and placed a soft kiss on his forehead, lingering just a for few seconds. 

Yut-Lung breathed in his scent. He’d always smell like the first autumn wind, he thought. It was a faint rosewood aroma, just enough to awaken the nose to its earthy scent. It curled and settled within his lungs like a once-stray dog guided home by warmth and the promise of constant company. It was simple enough in itself: just the full, rich smell of autumn. The scent was always a welcome assault to his senses. His movements stirred the air and allowed the fragrance to waft right through where Yut-Lung was perched on the bed, a full luxury on the experience. 

As if pulled from a trance, he faced the puzzled Sing slowly, noting in his stupor the myriad questions littered all over his brown eyes. 

“You okay?” Sing cooed, as he often did whenever he felt the littlest possibility of trouble. He was unaware that he did this but Yut-Lung always noticed. It made him feel like a child, but, strangely, he felt his discomforts abated and himself consoled more than annoyed, as he was wont to feel at being treated like so. 

They’ve had a passionate conversation about his hair before; Sing had ran his fingers through his long tresses and enthusiastically declared he loved it. Yut-Lung loved that he loved it. He loved that someone was giving him attention separate and markedly distinct from that which was unwarranted. He loved the magic that came with Sing’s words. 

To a certain extent however, in his heart he knew something would tell them that time was up. Sure enough, Sing had broken the spell when he brought up the wounds in his heart and poked them too hard. He told him that his hair was not an extension of his character, but that of his mother’s. 

Yut-Lung recalled vividly how Sing had called it a festering attachment that latched onto him too fiercely that he could not distinguish where his mother’s memory ends and where his own starts. He remembered how Sing had spelled out his life for him, sentence by sentence, picking him apart and throwing the pieces on the floor for him to see from above. 

Sing had told him was alright for him to mourn, to embrace grief and wear it for the sake of someone you loved. Sing had told him there was a cogent purpose in making it a driving force, but that it had to end at some point. A traitorous voice had whispered to him that he knew Sing was right and it was the very reason his words had sunk deep into his bones, curdling the leftover resentment and anger he had for his whole goddamn family and hurtling the blocks back at him in scathing contempt.

He had lashed out at him, as was his usual defense at the instance people get too close for comfort. How dare you, he had growled at him then, how dare you mock what I’ve built this life upon. He vaguely remembered his voice trembling, breaking, and shattering just as his heart had then. But he also knew Sing hadn’t been mocking him, he knew Sing had only been telling him what’s under the bloodied carpet beneath his feet. He had only been telling him, but because he had been hitting truths upon hidden truths, Yut-Lung had wanted to cave in. 

He remembered the anger that made him shake and sweat and remembered how Sing had just stood there, taking it all like a wooden board against a flurry of blades. 

Most of all, he remembered how Sing, despite the weak punches he had received from him, still consoled him after the fit, stroking his head as if he were a toddler at the denouement of his outburst. There were no tears but Sing had stuck around long enough after their confrontation to make sure there weren’t any more veiled under his heart. 

It wasn’t long before they reconciled in a dance under the sheets. Nobody could remember who initiated, or how it started, but he guessed it hardly mattered at the height of ecstasy and pleasure.

And that was when he felt his voice start to slowly unravel and unwrap what was beneath his aching ribs. He let the roiling thunder that has settled there come at a standstill and though it has only grown stronger since the day his mother’s blood pooled beneath her lifeless body, he too learned how to grow in power to contrast it. 

While cradled within Sing’s arms, hands and limbs entangled amidst the mess of bed sheets and the musky scent of their sweat, he had told him that he kept his hair long as a reminder, for both him and his demon brothers, of the life that they took from him, and the childhood they snatched in their stride. Sing had told him he knew of it, that it made no difference, and that it was okay, that he was going to be okay. 

And he was. Right now. Somehow.

“I’m okay.” he answered finally, brushing away the strands of hair that attempted to cover one eye. 

“Hmm.” Sing voiced. Yut-Lung knew there was a blizzard of questions underneath the younger man’s quiet reflection, and within them an inconspicuous desire to know more. Granted, Sing has made home in his mind as someone he can candidly share his thoughts to, Yut-Lung still very much appreciates how so delicately Sing traipses in and around his sensibilities like water around oil, avoiding contact until it allows so. 

Sometimes, however, with nothing but the touch of the wind, and much to Yut-Lung’s reluctant pleasure, Sing’s soul approaches him with the force of a hurricane disguised in a tender contact. 

Much like now. 

With the force of a gentle breeze, Sing inched closer so that his arm brushed that of Yut-Lung slightly. He patted Yut-Lung’s thigh and let out a not at all displeased sigh.

“Okay.” he smiled, the ghost of the headstrong, hard-nosed 14-year-old briefly took over his features. 

That was all he needed to say. In that moment, between them occured something that developed over time; an unstated understanding that settled warmly within Yut-Lung’s heart.

Yut-Lung leaned into him and released a heavy sigh.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/katsudono_)


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